


Ficlets

by roquentine



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angst and Fluff and Smut, Established Sherlock Holmes/John Watson, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-08-28
Updated: 2016-10-24
Packaged: 2018-08-11 09:36:07
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 5,500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7885936
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/roquentine/pseuds/roquentine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Archive of ficlets originally posted on <a href="http://roquentine19.tumblr.com/">Tumblr</a>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. It's Not What It Looks Like

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt was "It's not what it looks like..." (Alert: drunk!fic.)

John doesn’t get out of the clinic until after 1am. It’s the Friday night after the last day of exams at the local university, so he agreed to a later shift to help with the kids who got a little too drunk (or a lot too drunk) and missed a step somewhere, resulting in a cut or scrape or occasional sprain. He dresses their wounds and doles out paracetamol like candy, then helps them back outside to a hopefully slightly more sober friend and sends them on their way. No lectures; he was a uni student once, too.

But it was a long day, and by the time he pushes through the front door at 221B, he’s looking forward to a quick shower and then crawling into bed and curling up behind Sherlock’s back and sleeping for as long as he’ll let him.

Instead, as John trudges up the stairs, he finds both doors to the flat flung wide open, spilling all the light from every lamp they own into the hallway. He stops at the kitchen door and tries to make sense of what he sees.

On the table are at least eight different open liquor bottles, and four highball glasses, three of them drained of whatever their contents were. There’s also an open and half-empty jar of maraschino cherries, a lime cut haphazardly into bits, a peeled lemon with no sign of the peel anywhere, and a single olive on a toothpick balanced on the mouth of one of the liquor bottles.

And there’s one Sherlock.

He’s sitting at the table in his pajamas and dressing gown. Well, not sitting, exactly, but resting his head on one arm that is outstretched along the table’s length, watching the liquid in the remaining glass swirl around as he stirs it with a swizzle stick. When he realizes John is standing there, he sits up with a start and nearly falls out of the chair.

“It’s not what it looks like…” Sherlock slurs, blinking like he can’t remember where he is just at the moment.

“Really,” John says. “What do you think I think it looks like?”

“I think you think I think it _looks_ like…” - Sherlock regards the table, thinks with his face, and then spreads his hands triumphantly - “I’ve opened a bar in our kitchen.”

“Pretty accurate assessment.”

“Well,” Sherlock says, pointing at nothing in particular, “I’ll have you know it is a very inaccurate ashess… ashmess…” His face screws up in concentration.

“Sherlock,” John is bone tired but he can’t help but laugh. “What are you doing?”

“An experiment.” Sherlock seems momentarily surprised at the fact that he’s pronounced this correctly. “An experiment,” he says again, quietly but proudly, looking around the kitchen for kudos from anyone else he may find there.

“What kind of experiment?” John says, adopting the same tone of voice he just used for the last four hours with the drunk students, one of exaggerated genuine interest. Trying to have the most ridiculous conversation possible is the most fun you can have as a completely sober person talking to a completely drunk person. He digs in the drawer for their own bottle of paracetamol, because apparently he has one more dose to dole out, then finds a clean glass in the cupboard and holds it under the tap.

“An experiment with… beverages.”

“A beverages experiment.”

“Yesh.”

“Got it. Take these,” John says, dropping the pills into Sherlock’s hand, “and drink this,” setting the glass down in front of him. Sherlock throws the pills into his mouth, then picks up the glass with both hands and downs it in one go.

“Delicious!” he declares, then narrows his eyes at the bottles. “Which one was that?”

“It was one part water, and one part water.” John says this like it makes complete sense, and Sherlock nods like it does as well. John refills the glass and hands it back. “Slower this time, please.”

Sherlock glares and takes a tiny petulant sip. “Honestly, John, I can hold… my… _water_.” He giggles, and takes another tiny sip, except he’s still giggling, and he chokes on it.

John slaps him on the back as he coughs through it, then sits down at the table. “So, what was your hypothesis?” he asks, just to see if he can get Sherlock to attempt the word.

“I have to be honest,” Sherlock says, and John is seriously disappointed, “I don’t… really… remember.”

John smiles and says all of this in one smooth, conversational, Sherlock-making-a-deduction breath: “You don’t really remember why you retrieved every liquor bottle from our cabinet, arranged them on the table, poured some measure of the contents of each of them into four different vessels, retrieved all the popular cocktail garnishes from various locations throughout the refrigerator, added them to the vessels in multiple combinations, and proceeded to ingest them over what I’m estimating was the last hundred and twenty minutes?”

Sherlock blinks at him, slowly, three times, inhales thoughtfully, and replies, “What was the question?”

“Do you remember your results?” John asks calmly.

Sherlock scoffs. “Of _course_ , John. You see,” he says, clearing his throat and getting down to business, “there are brown liquids in clear bottles and clear liquids in brown bottles, but there are _also_ brown liquids in brown bottles and clear liquids in clear bottles, and _this_ one…” he points dramatically, “…is _blue_.” His face is utterly serious. He blinks at John again, meaningfully.

John has tried to maintain a poker face, he really has, but at this he absolutely bursts out laughing. “Well done. Finish your water, and let’s go to bed.”

“A capital idea!” Sherlock shouts. He downs the water and stands up and immediately sits back down again, his arm stretching back along the table, his head lowering alongside it. “I might… just… sleep here, I think.”

“No, you won’t,” John says, grabbing an arm and hoisting him up and maneuvering him around the table toward the bedroom. “You’ll be much more comfortable in bed.”

“Bed!” Sherlock shouts, again. “Yes. Bed is good. You, John, are in my bed, usually.”

“Yes, that’s right, I am in your bed usually.”

“Not tonight though.” They’re halfway to the bedroom and Sherlock drifts into the wall and leans there, resting his head, and John stops with him for a second. “You were definitely not in my bed tonight. I looked everywhere.”

“Did you forget I was working late, love?” John reaches up and ruffles his hair back from his forehead, then cups his face gently, stroking a cheekbone with his thumb.

“Of course not, I didn’t _forget_ , I just didn’t… remember, I suppose, so I got up to have a drink.” Sherlock lifts his head from the wall and looks at John through wide eyes. “I think,” he whispers loudly, “I might have had more than one.” He gives a serious nod.

“Yeah, I think you might have done,” John says, urging him on into the bedroom. He tries to keep Sherlock standing steadily while pulling back the covers, then lets him sit down on the edge of the bed.

“No, wait, this is your side,” Sherlock says as he falls sideways into the pillow. He makes a half-hearted attempt to pull his legs onto the mattress but it doesn’t quite work and he seems resigned to sleeping in this position.

“How about we keep you closest to the toilet tonight,” John says, lifting Sherlock’s legs at the ankles and tucking them in carefully. He pulls the covers up around his shoulders, and strokes his head one more time.

“A capital idea,” Sherlock says, and snores on his next inhale.


	2. Ice Cream

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt was "ice cream."

“ _Sherlock_.” **  
**

John is standing in front of the open freezer with a paper bag in the shape of a pint of ice cream in his hand and a seriously exasperated expression on his face.

“John.” Sherlock’s reply is more or less automatic. He couldn’t be bothered to look up from the microscope, at this particular moment, unless one of four circumstances exists: he is asked a question, he is given new information, John is naked, or John is in imminent danger. The statement of his name doesn’t qualify under the former two, and his peripheral vision confirms that the latter two aren’t the case either.

“We’ve _talked_ about this. Occasionally, I would like to put some bloody ice cream in our bloody freezer and not have to _move body parts_ to do it.”

“They’re not all body parts,” Sherlock huffs under his breath, his eyes still on the bacteria moving in rather fascinating patterns on his slide.

“That is _not_ the point, and you _know_ it.” John reaches in and grabs something at random, a vaguely spherical lump, frozen solid and covered in what looks to be several torn pieces of aluminum foil. “I’m throwing this out.”

“Wait!” Sherlock jumps up from the table and first hastily, then delicately, removes the lump from John’s grip. “This one’s important. If it retains its shape after three defrostings and refreezings, I’ll finally have the proof I need to correct that frankly ridiculous article in the British Journal of Science about the cryogenic potential of…”

“Fine, this one then,” John interrupts, handing Sherlock a small box with a keyhole in the front of it. “And what the hell needs to be _locked up_ while it’s in our freezer?”

“It could be incredibly valuable, we just have to wait another four months and eight days to open it and if the material inside hasn’t actually dissolved…”

“Sorry, Sherlock, but you’re making room for this fucking pint of ice cream. Now stand here and pick something so we can move on with our lives.”

Sherlock stares into the freezer for a moment, and then, instead of picking something, he reaches over and cups the back of John’s head, bringing his mouth to John’s and kissing him earnestly.

John relaxes into the kiss despite his frustration, because they are still at the stage where he finds Sherlock’s inappropriately timed affection to be more amusing than anything else. He thinks Sherlock honestly believes this is what he is supposed to do at this point, like he heard the phrase “make-up sex” somewhere and decided that this is how it must start, by kissing your partner the very moment he gets mad at you.

Sherlock moves into him eagerly, backing him up, and John is fine with it all, right until his head bumps against something in the freezer that he fears may just be one of the legitimate body parts still in there, and finds this spoils the mood somewhat. He pushes back against his beloved detective.

“Sherlock, I’m serious, my ice cream is melting…”

Sherlock calmly closes the freezer door. “Would you be up for an experiment?” he asks, reaching for the bag in John’s hand and extracting the pint, and flipping it with a twist of his wrist so it lands in his hand a moment later, label side up. “Rum raisin, my favorite.” He looks up at John expectantly.

John is, in fact, up for it, because he isn’t dead, but he can’t bring himself to give in quite so quickly. “Now? I haven’t had a proper supper yet.”

“Nothing wrong with ice cream for dinner every once in a while, and I promise the presentation will be quite original. Also I’ve often wondered about the melting point of viscous liquids exposed to direct body heat…”

John sighs, and smiles. He often found a certain sexiness to science when he was in school, but Sherlock took it to a whole new level. “Fine, but you’re dealing with the sheets afterward.”

“Of course!” Sherlock is studying the ingredients label intently and therefore replies like he isn’t actually listening.

“Sherlock, I mean it,” John says as Sherlock starts toward the bedroom. “You can’t just hand them off to Mrs. Hudson. Not this time.”

“Whatever! Grab a spoon, would you? There might be leftovers.”

_Epilogue: There are no leftovers._


	3. Heatwave

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: heatwave. (This did NOT go where I was expecting. Also, rated E!)

It’s the first weekend in August, and London is having the worst heatwave that anyone currently alive can remember. The air is stagnant, wet and heavy, and any breeze that picks up feels like it is emanating from some kind of giant invisible blow dryer. Everyone in the city with any money, time, and good sense has decamped to whatever bit of seaside could still accommodate them, which makes for a somewhat less hectic Saturday morning shift than usual at the clinic. **  
**

John stays behind a few minutes after he is technically off the clock, catching up on paperwork, not terribly eager to leave the blissfully air-conditioned office for the oven that 221B has proven to be. When he can find no real or even fabricated reason to stay any longer, he slings his bag over his shoulder and steps out to the sidewalk.

The heat is immediately stifling, and John tries to figure out whether a sweltering twenty-minute walk back to Baker Street would be better or worse than an even-more-sweltering ten-minute ride on the tube. He opts to walk after deciding to stop at Tesco’s on the way for whatever cold lunch options he can find. As he’s waiting in the queue, he notices one last bag of ice in the cooler and grabs it.

Despite hugging the bag of ice on the rest of his walk home, he is dripping with sweat by the time he reaches the flat, and he can feel the temperature rise with each slow step up to the sitting room. John stashes the ice in the freezer, appreciating the air that hits him when he opens the door, then deposits containers of pasta salad and fruit in the fridge. A glance at the table tells him Sherlock has at least been up this morning, but he hasn’t seen or heard him since he walked in.

“Sherlock?” he calls, drifting down the hall to their room. “Are you here? I brought in some lunch, but I need to take a shower first…”

He stops as he enters the bedroom, and a slow grin spreads across his face. All the bedcovers and pillows have been pushed to the floor, leaving only the fitted sheet intact. Sherlock is lying on his stomach on his side of the bed, his arms outstretched at slight angles from his body, motionless and completely naked.

“Okay,” Sherlock mumbles into the mattress.

“Are you all right?” John asks, barely holding back a chuckle.

“It’s really… _ridiculously_ … hot,” Sherlock mumbles again, as though actually forming his mouth around the words required too much effort.

John gives in to laughter as he steps into the bathroom and peels his sticky clothes from his body. He turns the water on to a temperature just barely above full-blast cold, and steps into the shower.

He steps out again twenty minutes later, savoring the fact that for what he knows will be a very brief amount of time, he is _cold_. He dries off and wraps the towel around his waist, then peeks in the bedroom. Sherlock hasn’t moved a muscle and appears to be sleeping, so John pads to the kitchen and digs into the pasta salad, eating half the container while standing irresponsibly in front of the open fridge.

He was going to suggest going to the movies as a way of escaping the heat, but that requires putting on clothes and moving around outside. Sherlock’s idea seems like the only reasonable alternative, really. He walks back into the bedroom and around to his side of the bed, drops the towel to the floor, and lays down on his back, stretching out his arms and legs in a mirror of Sherlock’s position, and tries to sleep.

* * * * *

John drifts awake when he feels Sherlock stretch and then heave himself slowly off the bed. Late afternoon sun is casting into the room through the curtains, the air still heavy and oppressive. He listens to Sherlock shuffle into the loo, has no choice but to listen to him use it, then listens to him move down the hall into the kitchen.

A few minutes later, when he hears Sherlock come back into the room, John pulls his eyes open with a groan - he swears even his eyelids are sweaty. Sherlock is holding two glasses of ice water. Like any good British subject, John usually prefers his drinking water room temperature, but the glass Sherlock is holding out to him is already gathering condensation and it shines like an irresistible beacon. He sits up and takes it, drinking a long swig, then lays back down. He presses the bottom of the glass to his forehead, then the center of his chest. Sherlock drinks until there’s nothing but ice left in his own glass, then flops back down on his stomach.

“Fuck, this is awful,” John says, his voice a bit gravelly from their nap. “The last time I was this hot I was in the desert in full combat gear, not starkers on a bed in London.” He continues to move the glass around his torso, leaving trails of condensation mixed with the sheen of sweat on his skin. He tips up his head to take another drink, then balances the glass on his forehead again and closes his eyes.

He hears what sounds like Sherlock trying to drink whatever water has melted off the ice in his glass. A moment later, he sucks in a breath through his teeth at the feel of ice pressed into his wrist. He exhales and settles into the sensation as Sherlock drifts it up his arm.

“Christ, that feels good,” John whispers, as the ice moves up and down his forearm, then presses into the crook of his elbow.

Then he feels Sherlock’s tongue lapping at the water trail.

His cock twitches.

“Sherlock,” he breathes, his tone a bit of a warning.

“What?” Sherlock asks innocently.

“It might honestly be too hot for this,” John says without much conviction.

“There are things we can do,” Sherlock says, drawing the ice cube over John’s shoulder, across his neck, and down to a nipple, “that involve minimal skin-to-skin contact. Heat generation, perhaps, but no transfer.”

John sighs as Sherlock’s mouth closes over the chilled nipple. “That doesn’t sound like much fun.”

“Then your imagination is failing you,” Sherlock chides. His body shifts down the bed as he draws the ice lower along John’s torso, to his hip, and the sensitive line above his thigh, still following it with his tongue, and then John’s imagination catches up in a dawn of realization as Sherlock settles on his side. He props his head on his hand and looks back up the bed at John as he cheekily sucks the rest of the ice cube until it disappears.

John smiles as he turns onto his side as well. “This didn’t go so well the last time we tried it.”

“The last time we were a bit worse for the whiskey Lestrade brought us back from Ireland,” Sherlock says as he dips his head toward John’s knee and mouths his way up his thigh. “The heat may be sapping our energy, but I have faith in our sober coordination.”

John drains his glass and leans behind him to set it down, but pulls an ice cube into his own mouth first. He trails the back of his hand along Sherlock’s thigh and presses his mouth to a knee, drawing the ice in a circle, as his hand finds Sherlock’s half-hard cock. As he drifts his fingers lightly along the shaft, he hears, “Wait… I think… just…” and feels Sherlock tugging him down the bed as he’s shifting back up.

Finally they are more or less where they need to be. John rests one hand lightly on Sherlock’s hip as he draws his cock into his mouth. It’s such an odd sensation, this position, and he has to resist a strange urge to somehow try to move his head around. He tilts forward and slides his mouth down, inhaling the musky scent of sweat and salt, then groans around the shaft as he feels his own cock sink into Sherlock’s ice-cooled mouth.

They shift a little bit more, just a few inches here and there, getting everything lined up and balanced, until they finally find a comfortable fit and fall into a steady mutual rhythm. At some point John feels Sherlock’s hand drift from his hip to pump him along with this mouth, and John follows suit. They continue to tease with wrist twists and tongue flicks, each giving back what they feel from the other, and adding something to it.

Unsurprisingly, not too much time passes before they sense each other’s desperation and start to pump in earnest, hard and fast. John feels Sherlock’s hand fist in his hair, a warning, and he pulls Sherlock’s hips forward to keep the head of his cock at the back of his throat. Sherlock pulls off John to moan breathlessly as he comes, his hips twitching uncontrollably into John’s mouth, and John moves with him, swallowing and swallowing around him.

John laves at Sherlock’s cock as Sherlock catches his breath, but in short order he goes back to work on John with renewed intensity. John is close, so close, and all he has to do is look down and see his cock disappearing into Sherlock’s long, pale, obscenely gorgeous throat, and he cries out, and comes, feeling Sherlock swallow him down, like he had done just seconds before.

* * * * *

The fall to their backs, not touching, each of them sweating, breathing heavily, and extremely satisfied with their efforts.

John giggles. “Well,” he gasps, “I think that went much better without the whiskey.”

Sherlock laughs too. “Agreed.”

“I think I’m going to cool off in the shower again, if you’d care to join me.”

“That,” Sherlock says, raising his torso off the bed, “is literally the only thing that could entice me to move right now.”

John sits up too, and they lean in to share their first kiss of the day.

(It’s really, _ridiculously_ hot.)


	4. Undivided Attention

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt was "Little of Your Time" by Maroon 5. _(Please don't leave, stay in bed, touch my body instead...)_

He’s moving over John, holding himself up with hands that are wrapped around John’s wrists, pressing them to the bed on either side of John’s head. He is only barely staying out of contact, lowering himself just enough to ghost his lips here and there over John's neck and upper torso. John inhales deeply, a trick to lift his chest, but Sherlock, wise to the ploy, rises with him, maintaining the thin space between them.  
  
Every attempt is futile. John hates when he does this, loves when he does this. He raises his head, his mouth angling for Sherlock’s, but no. Sherlock shifts and John’s nose glances off a sharp cheekbone. He hovers his open mouth just out of reach, a breath is shared, and then he pulls up, smirking.  
  
John groans as his head drops back to the pillow. He screws his eyes shut tight and concentrates on gathering every piece of sensory information he can. The weight on his wrists, a pressure he craves more than he’d care to admit. The presence and heat emanating from the body just above him. The unruly hair that brushes his chest, preceding by a fraction of a second the warmth of a breath, the touch of a lip, or if he’s lucky that time, the dart of a tongue.  
  
John sucks in a breath as his luck holds, and the tip of Sherlock's tongue tastes the dead center of John's sternum.  
  
A sharp buzzing on the table beside the bed breaks the spell. Sherlock’s mobile.  
  
John opens his eyes to find Sherlock pulled up, looking at the phone, his brows knotted with instant curiosity.  
  
In the next three seconds, John does several rather unexpected things. First he lunges up, easily breaking free of Sherlock’s grip, which had relaxed during the detective’s moment of distraction. John rolls them over, reversing their positions, and quickly captures one of Sherlock’s wrists.  
  
Before securing the second wrist, though, he grabs the mobile from the table and whips it over his shoulder. It smashes against the wall and clatters to the floor, in several pieces, judging by the sound.  
  
Sherlock looks up at John as the bits of phone come to rest, his eyes wide and questioning. He doesn’t try to move. John is breathing deeply, adrenaline pumping.  
  
“I’m afraid I’m going to require your undivided attention,” John says.  
  
Sherlock’s mouth opens and closes as though he means to protest, then decides not to. He presses his lips together for another moment. A gleam appears in his eye.  
  
“And so you shall have it,” he finally says, in a voice quite intentionally deep.  
  
John slams his mouth into Sherlock’s, determined to keep that attention undivided, as long as he possibly can.


	5. Violin Ficlet

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A little violin fluff.

There’s a haunting melody, a melancholic progression of notes, filling the space in his head, drawing him in. They’re coming from a violin. He’s moving through a house that’s his but isn’t his, searching out the source, certain he’s found it with every corner he turns, but it seems to drift out ahead of him, always the same distance away, always just in the next room. **  
**

“Sherlock? Is that you?” John thinks he’s speaking at a normal volume, but his voice is only a whisper. “Sherlock?” he tries again, but it’s still a whisper, and the notes are starting to sound strange now, and there’s a staircase in front of him that wasn’t there a second ago, and somewhere in the back of his head he begins to realize he’s dreaming.

So he freezes in front of the weird new staircase, closes his eyes in the dream, and wills himself through the hypnagogic fog until he finally awakens and sits up, in the home he knows is his own.

Except he can still hear the notes.

He blinks and scrubs a hand through his hair to dissipate the last fuzzy sensations of the dream. Sherlock is, in fact, playing the violin in the sitting room, but he’s using his practice mute, a metal device that fits over the bridge and dampens the volume. He always uses it when he plays in the middle of the night, like he is now.

John glances at the clock. 2:30 am. He doubts Sherlock had even come to bed.

He shrugs into his robe and shuffles out into the kitchen. Sherlock is facing the window, as usual, and John doesn’t want to startle him, so he leans in the doorway, watching him in the glow of the fairy lights Mrs. Hudson hangs on the mantel every December, which they both secretly enjoy. He listens to the sad, sweet melody, until it comes to an end, and Sherlock lets the instrument drop from his shoulder.

“Hey,” John says quietly, moving now to sink into his chair.

Sherlock turns around, a look of guilt crossing his face. “Sorry, did I wake you?”

“Not really,” John says, rubbing his hair again. “The melody came into my dream. I knew it was you playing, and kept trying to find you, but every time I went into a new room, it seemed like you had just moved out of it.”

“You usually don’t wake up when I use the mute.” Sherlock leans over and brushes John’s mouth with a soft kiss of apology. “I’m sorry,” he whispers, kissing him again before dropping back into his own chair, resting the violin and bow across his lap, and stretching his legs forward.

“It’s okay,” John says truthfully. “I never mind listening to you play. That one was a bit sad, yeah?”

“It’s ‘Ase’s Death,’ from Peer Gynt.”

“Ah.” John smiles. “I suppose that would have to be sad, then. Beautiful, though.”

“Yes, it is.” Sherlock’s fingers form silent notes across the strings of the instrument, his head leaning back in the chair, his eyes on the ceiling.

John leans forward over his knees, his expression soft, concerned. “Come to bed?”

Sherlock shakes his head slightly. “Not yet. It’s a little busy up here tonight.” He puts a palm to his forehead, then slides his hand back through his own hair and lifts his head to look at John. “I can play you back to sleep, though? That one lullaby that always works?”

“Honestly, Sherlock,” John says as he pulls himself to his feet, “if you ever tell anyone that you can make me fall asleep by playing a lullaby, I will throw that violin out the window.” Sherlock smiles, a soft chuckle. “You know, maybe I should try playing you to sleep instead.”

Now Sherlock laughs outright. “With what? Is your clarinet around here somewhere?”

John points at the violin. “No, with that.” He grins mischievously.

Sherlock stares up at him, instinctively hunching over the instrument as if protecting it. “Have you ever played the violin before?”

John shrugs. “How hard can it be?”

“Really hard, actually. It’s one of the most difficult orchestral instruments to learn how to play properly.”

John waves a hand dismissively. “Tosh. I’ve seen five-year-olds play them. Come on, let me try it.”

“Fine. We’ll attract all the feral cats in the neighborhood, shall we? Stand up straight,” Sherlock says exasperatedly, pushing John’s shoulders back a little. He moves around behind John’s right shoulder and holds the bow out in front of him. “Thumb here, four fingers on the other side.” John takes it from him and tries to mimic the position. “Here… just…” Sherlock mutters, repositioning a couple of fingers, and sighing in despair.

He moves to John’s left side and settles the padded shoulder rest across his collarbone, then lifts John’s left hand to the violin’s neck. “No, like this,” he tuts, turning John’s wrist and moving it under the fingerboard so he’s holding it correctly. He stands back and regards John, who looks like he’s afraid to move.

Sherlock rolls his eyes closed. “Okay, just relax. Move it around under your chin until it feels right.”

John tries to settle his jaw against the black chinrest. “I don’t think this is ever going to feel right.” He pulls the violin away for a second and looks down at it, then tucks it back under his chin. “They couldn’t have made the chinrest out of something soft? It’s not terribly comfortable.”

Sherlock just glares at him. John giggles. “Sorry, sorry. I’m good. Now what?”

Sherlock turns his palms up and raises his hands in a gesture of mock surrender. “Just… try drawing the bow across some strings and we’ll see what happens.”

John lifts the bow and pulls it to the right across each string in turn until he runs out of horsehair, then moves it back across, and does it again. “Hey!” he smiles dumbly, looking inordinately proud of himself. “I played something!” He runs the bow over the strings a few more times.

“Very good!” Sherlock says brightly and full of sarcasm. “Are we done?”

He holds out his hands to take the instrument back.

But then something very strange happens.

John repositions the violin under his chin, adjusts his grip on the bow, arranges the fingertips of his left hand over the strings, and plays the first three notes of Brahms’ Lullaby.

Then he plays them again.

Then he plays the next seven notes.

Sherlock stares at him, dumbfounded. His hands fall slowly to his sides.

John continues the simple, familiar melody, albeit haltingly and a bit off pitch. He’s clearly a beginner, hitting an entirely wrong note now and then, playing eighth notes at the same speed as every other note, running out of bow during some stretches. But he corrects himself when he can and eventually makes it all the way through the song, finishing with a long, clear final D.

He takes a deep breath and lowers the instrument, turning to smile at Sherlock, whose eyes have gone a bit wet.

“How…” Sherlock starts, and his voice catches. “I mean… when…?”

John laughs kindly, thinking of how rarely he’s ever able to render Sherlock speechless. “The extra shifts I’ve been taking at work? Some of them were lessons.” He suddenly feels almost shy with embarrassment. “I was going to surprise you on Christmas morning, wrap up my crap music store student violin and let you open it. I’ve been learning ‘We Wish You A Merry Christmas,’ too.” He laughs again when he sees Sherlock’s expression hasn’t changed. “Honestly, I never know what to get you, so…”

Sherlock’s hands fly suddenly to John’s head, pulling him in to a chaste, then affectionate, then passionate kiss. John leans into Sherlock’s embrace, lifting his hands, still holding the bow and violin, to press against Sherlock’s back. After a long moment, Sherlock ends the kiss and presses their foreheads together. They breathe in silence for a second.

“You’re the best gift I could ever ask for, you know,” Sherlock whispers.

“Come to bed?” John asks again, his voice low and full of need.

“Oh, yes.”


End file.
